Wednesday, June 11, 2014

"A Nation Is Built By Its Saints, Not By Its Monsters;" Should Poland Be Grateful to the Red Army? A Russian Responds

Raising a Flag over the Reichstag by Yevgeny Khaldei
Source: Wikipedia

Should Poles and Poland be grateful to the Red Army for
its actions during World War II?

June 6, 2014 was the seventieth anniversary of D-Day. I
celebrated on Facebook and on this blog. I expressed gratitude to the young
American men, average age 22, who charged into Nazi machine gun fire on Omaha
Beach and other landing sites.

My friend Natasha Vaubel wrote to remind me to be
grateful to the Red Army.

On Facebook, I acknowledged that the Red Army caused the
greatest number of casualties to the Nazis. I said, though, that I am not
grateful to the Red Army. I gave my reasons for this lack of gratitude. Just
one such reason. The Red Army invaded Poland in 1939, along with Nazi Germany.
After the war, I see the Red Army's advance into Eastern Europe as an invasion
and an occupation.

Facebook friend Magdalena Paśnikowska advanced her
reasons for gratitude to the Red Army. The Red Army made a huge contribution to
defeating the Nazis. The average soldier should not be conflated with Stalin or
other evil Soviet leaders, who did very bad things to Russians, as well as to
Poles.

A Russian woman, Anna Domasheva, responded to the thread.
Ms. Domasheva's response was so powerful and eloquent I asked for, and
received, permission to post her response. Please read it below, in full, with
very few, minor proofreading changes by me.

Ms. Domasheva referred to another blog post by me entitled
"What the Heck is Wrong with the
Irish?" Recently
news has come out about an alleged mass grave of infants in Tuam, Ireland.
People have been eager to attribute evil to the nuns who ran the orphanage
associated with the alleged mass grave. I wanted to say that we don't yet know
the full story of the alleged mass grave and we shouldn't rush to associate
cruelty to children with one ethnicity – Irish people – one religion –
Catholicism – or one order – the Bon Secours nuns.

***

Anna Domasheva writes:

First of all, if ever one person can stand for a nation –
and I believe we all can – then I beg you for forgiveness, for the pardon of
the unpardonable: for what your families, friends, and fellow countrymen had to
endure.

I read this thread from the beginning and I noticed how
closely the debate came at the end to Danusha's previous post ("What the heck is wrong with the Irish?"). Basically, it was becoming
the same question, but with "Russians" instead of the Irish.

I thought about other historical comparisons, and a few
names came to mind.

Feliks Dzierżyński: the founder and first head of the
all-powerful Cheka-NKVD police, the foremost organizer of the Red Terror,
having introduced torture and mass summary executions in Russia on an
unprecedented scale, unimaginable in czarist times. [Dzierzynkski was Polish.
The Cheka, his brainchild, went on to become the KGB.]

Wiaczesław Mężyński: successor of Dzierżyński as the head
of Cheka-NKVD, idem for the professional activities.

Stanisław Kosior: head of the Communist Party of Ukraine
in the 30s – and a major architect of the Holodomor.

Andrzej Wyszyński: a state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's
Moscow trials (his favorite sentence: "Kill them all as the mad dogs they
are!!!")

These people are personally responsible for millions of
deaths.

No, they did not personally rape and kill hundreds of
thousands of women.

But do you believe that what the horde of dirty
"Ivans" did in 1945 was more evil than what did these refined
gentlemen – three of them belonging to ancient Polish nobility – did to Russia
during the years 1918 – 1953?

I do not think so.

They gang-raped my country, murdering not only its body,
but its soul.

They made – amongst other diligent servants of the regime
– the crime of Katyn possible.

One could be tempted to ask: how is it possible that in an
enormous country – run first by a bloodthirsty Russian lunatic and then by a
bloodthirsty Georgian thug – the bloodthirsty himmlers-goebbels-görings of both
the lunatic and the thug were Poles?

So – what the heck is wrong with the Poles?

Nothing.

Because a nation is built by its saints, not by its
monsters.

Because "my" Poles are not Dzierżyński, Mężyński,
Kosior and Wyszyński.

Can it be then that the army of thugs terrorizing the
women of Eastern Europe/Germany in the spring 1945 – had also its true heroes?…
albeit dead by the time Soviets entered Prussia?

The 22-year-old boys at Omaha beach could land in
Normandy and land heroically and the majority would survive (sad majority
though – 70 %) amongst other reasons thanks to their Russian counterparts: to
the 18-years-old boys – every bit as bright-eyed and bright-minded as the
American soldiers in D-Day photos – who were taken from their first university
years to the front in the 1941 – and were all dead by the time the thugs came
to Germany as winners.

No. No – happily enough, not of all them dead … A young
artillery officer, appalled with the atrocities of Soviet troops, was arrested
by NKVD in February 1945 in Eastern Prussia. He was destined to spend many
years of his life in the Gulag, nearly die of cancer at the end of his term,
overcome the illness and finally write a book that would contribute to changing
the world to a freer place. The officer's name was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
whose poem "Prussian Nights" Danusha cites in the very beginning
of the thread.

-- Anna Domasheva

Ms. Domasheva sent the following photos; please scroll down to read her reasons for choosing these photos.

Of the photographs, above, Anna Domasheva wrote:

Here are several high school graduation shots of 1941 – and
these are actually the last civilian photos for the majority of the boys and
the male teachers (and in the photo from the Leningrad school – also for the
girls, who would very probably die of starvation during next winter). The
graduation balls in the Soviet Union were held Saturday evening June 21, and
the war began at dawn on Sunday June 22.

The last two photos are by great Robert Capa. His famous
"Magnificent Eleven" at Omaha beach needs no introduction. The second
one is less known, though for me it's as emblematic of the World War II as the
first. The shot was captured during Capa's voyage to USSR together with John
Steinbeck in 1947-1948 (Steinbeck wrote "A Russian Journal").

The photo has no specific name, but I call it "Women
or Victory Day".

These women could as well be Polish, Slovak, British or
American – though of course it's above all women of Eastern Europe.

This is about the loss that no victory can restore to
you. About the solitude of Victory Day.

20 comments:

An excellent assessment of the situation, Anna. Thank you so much for this. If only we could remember at all times that crimes are committed by individual monsters whose behaviour is not indicative of the whole nation, then people would never need to attempt to rewrite history. Thank you. Much appreciated.

Hello Anna - and all - I have never blamed the Russian people for what happened during WW2 and after - I blame the regime. Russians suffered terribly under both Hitler and Stalin as Poles did.

And I hope that the young men who fought and died in those armies - Russian, Polish, German, English, American, etc - are sleeping safe in "the everlasting arms" and will be woken from the sleep of death when the time comes, and that they will next open their eyes in an earth that is at peace - an earth restored to Paradise.

I think the question that should be asked is this: What is wrong with the world? Why are people so easily persuaded to turn on each other and slaughter each other?

The answer lies in the Inspired Scriptures, both Hebrew and Christian Greek.

I'm sorry, Anna, but russified Poles are not my countrymen. Dzierżyński, Mężyński, Kosior, Wyszyński- bunch of renegades, each and every one of them. Exept for Dzierżyński, they are not known in Poland. Average Pole is happily unaware that they existed. And the same goes for Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski or Theodore "The Unabomber" Kaczynski. As a Pole, I don't want to be blamed for every scoundrel with "-ski" in his last name.

Very interesting read. Thank you for writing this Anna and thank you for posting Danusha. I just finished reading, "Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing" by Anya Von Bremzen. She writes very interesting tale of life as an immigrant and shares her family's stories over 100 years of Soviet and post Soviet Union life. Every country has it's monsters and it's saints as your words and Bremzen's words illustrate. I like fleshing out my understanding of the relationships between countries and countries that are occupied by others. Your thoughts help. A monster's actions and voice do not speak for whole nation of individuals who are more likely humane, yet terrorized.

Ohh......, and Anna, The photos you shared are EXTREMELY moving. I can just sense the heaviness of all the souls gone at the end of WWII. All the women together with out their lovers, sons and fathers...

thank you very much for your comments, they mean a lot to me. It's touching and it's what I was hoping for.

Łukasz, I understand your position. The post was not about blaming with "-ski" in the last name. The post was about stereotypes - and the projections of disdain and hatred from the bunch of renegades unto more complex social units. Do the words like "russified" and "not my countrymen" imply that the renegades in question could never identify themselves as Poles ? What does "russified" mean exactly? Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was the very close friend of the Emperor Alexander 1, the all too powerful Russian minister for foreign affairs and one of the most influential men of the Empire - and that did neither "russify" him, not prevent his becoming President of the Polish National Government during November 1830 Uprising against Russians.

Generally speaking, the higher the social position of a person is, the more probable is the fact of his conscious sticking to his/his parents/grand-parents culture of origin. And if we take into account the very painful story of Polish-Russian relations ever since 1772, it becomes a matter of principle, of "noblesse oblige".

With Mężyński following up so conveniently Dzierżyński, and that nice guy Wyszyński hanging just around the corner - can we talk about a lobby? If not - why?

As for the argument that the "average Pole is happily unaware that they existed" - well, I can only say that "the average Russian" was happily unaware of them too until 1989-1991 ( and still many unaware today). But is it for "the average person" that the History's skeletons should be kept in the closet?

Those renegades were born and bred in Russian Empire and they bonded their future with Russia. That's what I mean by "russified'. We can use other words, pick some other state. They chose Russia. Theirs Russia, not Yours.

Prince Adam Czartoryski was close to the Emperor. No problem. Even closer to the Empress. That's fine. His father may have been Nicholas Repnin. It doesn't matter. Prince Adam was a Pole. He worked with Russians, or against them, for the good of his country. To be Polish doesn't mean that we have to hate Russians. We can like each other and still love our homelands.

As for that lobby. No, Anna, I dissagree. It's not an appropriate word. Lobby is a group that supports and represents others. They weren't supporting or representing Poland. They enslaved Russia. And that created a mortal threat to my country. Free Russia is in our own self-interest.

I see NO "lobbies". I see a criminal organisation made of losers with ambitions. Failed priests, bankrupts, petty gentry and unfulfilled intelectuals.I know what national group You had in mind, Mr Wallach. For Your information, I detest generalisation and conspiracy theories.

NKVD murdered about 500 Polish people in 1945 as the result of "Obława augustowska". The Russian state refuses to inform where the bodies have been buried. The Memorial cooperates with the Poles. Summarising I can see the hostile state supported by probably around 80% of people and a small and unpopular group of activists branded as spies.

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